Friday, June 29, 2007

Rabbi Glazerson is well-known because he has written several provocative books on topics in Jewish spirituality. Very connected man. One time he was driving from Sefat to Haifa at night and suddenly found himself re-entering Sefat. Must have taken a wrong turn.

So he turned around back to Sefat, along a road that he knew well, and after five minutes or so once again found himself back in Sefat - wrong turn again!

For the third time he set out for Haifa, this time paying closer attention than before to the road. After ten minutes can you guess what happened? He found himself back in Sefat.

"I guess I'm not meant to go to Haifa tonight," he said, and returned home.

Did this ever happen to you?

Something is not working, but you keep trying the same thing over and over again hoping you'll eventually succeed...

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein

According to Einstein's definition, if you are like me, you are sometimes insane! How do you fix that?

Here's a rule of thumb that you can try that has worked for me and evidently for Rabbi Glazerson: three-strikes. If I try something two times and fail, I say, "OK, one last time" and if it doesn't work the third time, I either change the tactics or give up.

But if you decide to abandon that path, don't do so in frustration - say: I guess it isn't meant to be.

Speaking of three strikes, our friend Adam Pollock alerted us to this marvelous Jewish baseball video:

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Friday, June 22, 2007

Dedicated to the memory of Galit Schiller, who died last Shabbat from complications after the birth of her third child. Our deepest condolences to husband Judah, son Tomer, daughter Naomi and baby Satya.To dedicate a future Table Talk, send an email.

Question for your table:From a Jewish perspective, what do you think is the most problematic aspect of Christianity?

For me personally, growing up in America, one of the things that I found most challenging about the dominant religion was the idea of some guy “dying for our sins.”

Preposterous, right? How could someone die for my sins? And why should my belief in him have anything to do with it?

Well...

Actually, it turns out that 95 percent of Christian and Islamic theologies come directly from Jewish thought. They just changed some of the key details.

For instance, the Talmud states: “The death of the righteous atones (for the living).”

Gee, that sounds a lot like the religion that I just dismissed....

To understand the Talmud, consider two questions:

1. What does atonement mean? 2. Why it should be only the death of the righteous that atones. Why not anyone’s death?

The answer to #1: atonement means purifying the soul of negative karma.

The answer to #2: it isn’t the death per se that atones, rather how we react to it.

When a less-than-righteous person dies, we may be sad but we don’t feel that sense of incomprehension, “Why did this happen?!!”

When a righteous person dies, we feel that overwhelming shock, “How could this have happened?” Some even say, “How could God let this happen?” It’s much more than a mere shanda.

And it is precisely that deep-down shutter of realizing that I don’t understand that atones, because negative karma can come from ego, which is characterized by feeling that I know something, that I’m smart, that I’m good because I know what good means. The shocking “unjust” death of the righteous wakes us from this ego-trip and thereby atones for all who hear the tragic news.

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Friday, June 15, 2007

Are events randomly happening to us? Is there some kind of cosmic harmony to the world?

I tell you my answer below, in the meantime, while you get a conversation going at your table around this question, I'd like to tell you about my friend Andy. Andy was working in a meaningful job in the Jewish community in Boston but felt he could do more for the Jewish People as well as for his family.

So after much deliberation, he became a chaplain for the US Army. He is giving spiritual support to many Jews.

He was supposed to be permanently stationed with his wife and children at Ft. Bragg.

He is now in Iraq. His official title is Chaplain (1LT) Shlomo Shulman, 4th Battalion, Combat Aviation Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, Camp Striker, Iraq.

May he be safe and successful.

If you would like to send words of encouragement to Andy and his men, his email address is . He is also longing for care packages - anything yummy to eat (and kosher) or interesting to read.

You can see in the photo below that he has central air in his tent so he can’t be shvitzin too bad...

He sent me a moving set of messages from soldiers under his care. Here is a sample:

___________________________________________________

-----Original Message-----Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2007

Chaplain Shulman, great to hear from you. Hope you are acclimating well to the warm temperatures we all get to experience here. I have meetings on Friday that generally run to 1900, which have kept me from being able to travel to Camp Victory for services (minus Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur which I was able to attend). However I hear we will be having services weekly at 1900 on Friday in the chow hall here, is this true? If so I intend to attend as much as I can. I am currently the XO of the MICO for 2/10 MTN and have been since mid Sept of last year. Thanks for contacting me and hope you are doing well. Take care, LT Frank___________________________________________________

So why do things happen?

My personal answer: Because we make ‘em happen.

Everything that happens to you is a result of something you did (either in this lifetime or a previous one).

The rule is that no matter what happens to you – whether painful or pleasant, immediate or distant – ask yourself: “what is the lesson in this? How am I supposed to react?”

Sometimes the lesson is simply to say “thank you”.

Sometimes the lesson is to be more careful, or more diligent.

Or honest.

(PS - you can only apply this answer to things that happen to you - when they happen to someone else, your witnessing it is what is happening to you. But you cannot ask what their lesson is - only what yours is.)

So here’s the follow-up Q for your table: Did something ever happen to you that was particularly painful, and you realized, “I deserve this because...”?

Now apply the same logic to the pleasant things.

Please have Andy and all of our dedicated soldiers in mind when you enjoy your weekend. Whatever you think about the war, if you don't appreciate their self-sacrifice every day, you've got a hole in your soul.

Is the poem about the irony of meeting your neighbor only to build a wall between you, or is it a metaphor for constructing social fences between people? Social fences make good relationships?

There are several religious Jewish families in our neighborhood. We’re even friendly with some of them. We recently saw some of these Jewish daughters hanging out with some teenage boys who are not Jewish. Normal for a secular teenage girl, unusual for a religious one. Then they were playing some kind of game that kids play. But one of the non-Jewish boys was overheard taunting one of the girls, “You can’t touch me because you’re Jewish!” I’m certain that he didn’t make that up.

Good fences....

Maybe he meant good fences as opposed to bad fences. The narrator’s voice comes across as critical of the wall, but acknowledges that his neighbor’s belief in the wall comes from his father – that is, from tradition. He has a tradition that good fences make good neighbors, but he may not know why.

Another Jewish fence besides the touching thing is the looking thing. If you have a significant someone in your life, man or woman, how do you feel when he or she looks at other women or men? How would it feel if you were absolutely certain that he or she never had eyes for anyone else?

That feeling is totally physical. There is nothing spiritual about it. Once, after hearing me say this, some guy challenged me -”Isn’t it possible to look at a woman and just appreciate her beauty without it being sexual?”

Well, I guess theoretically, but not practical for 99.9999995 percent of the men out there.

Judaism says that if you look merely at a woman-who’s-not-your-wife’s little finger in an aroused way, you are objectifying her, which is bad for you. Makes you more of an animal, less of a holy soul.

What’s a poor fella to do?

Well, he could start by finding a soul mate. And with her channel all of that physical energy into a synergistic spiritual fusion that can only happen when you’ve made a binding commitment to each other.

A soul mate isn’t the solution, but she can help.

Like any addiction, the surest way out of the wandering eye syndrome is a 12-step method. The first step is to admit you have a problem.

So men (and women) should at least be honest. Instead of “just looking” they should say, “Just lusting”. It’s not going to make your partner feel better, but it’s the way to start.

Here’s a little exercise you can do: next time you're out there - try counting how many times in one hour you wander after your eyes. Then challenge yourself to go an entire hour without seeking.

Friday, June 01, 2007

1. “Like an over-attended child, it is spoiled. It reeks of horns and harps, harmonica quartets, assorted animal noises and a 41-piece orchestra. ... an album of special effects but ultimately fraudulent.”

That’s from the New York Time’s review of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, released forty years ago tomorrow. The Beach Boys loved it, Frank Zappa hated it. Most of its songs were banned by the BBC.

Today the BBC can’t praise it enough. I wonder what proportion of our population can sing or hum one or more songs from that album.

How about this one:

2. “I only advocated that a person should have the right to have an option if he or she, in sound mind, needed and desired it while in irremediable pain and suffering and terminal."

Yes, that’s Dr. Death himself, Jack Kevorkian, released today after eight years in jail for second-degree murder. Unrepentant, he announced that he will now work for the legalization of assisted-suicide around the country.

Here is an online memorial to his first patient-victim, Janet Atkins (born 9 days before my father), who chose to end her own life while she was of sound mind and body: http://www.tccfui.org/MomsMemorialPage.html (content warning: discretion advised).

Why her family would be happy about this is beyond me. I think it’s meshugass.

Today the country is divided, according to an AP poll, nearly 50-50. Is it only a matter of time before other states join Oregon to legalize suicide?

You can’t tell me what kind of music to like, right? That’s a matter of taste. You can’t tell me that my musical choices are wrong, only that they don’t appeal to you.

What about what I do to my body? Is that also a matter of taste?

Maybe the next trend after piercings will be amputations. If a person wants to have their ear cosmetically amputated, or to cut off their arm to make a political statement, should that be legal?